Critical idiocy.
Jul. 21st, 2006 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaYou know...I've never had any respect for critics working for music magazines and/or websites. They are, to a one, awful writers, and--even worse--have appallingly bad taste in music. Witness the completely unwarranted fawning Rolling Stone, the godfather of all pointless magazines, always gives any "classic rock survivors" such as--surprise, surprise--the Rolling Stones when they issue yet another album of waaaaaaaay-past-their-prime drivel. Pitchfork Media cannot stop masturbating to the sound of their own voices praising and re-praising everything Radiohead and Thom "If I Whine More I'll Sound More Authentic" Yorke have ever put out. And then, worst of all, there's Blender--the music magazine that honestly has so little conception of just what makes certain types of music good that they actually define the "goodness" of music by its "popularity."
Today I stumbled upon Blender's "50 Worst Artists in Music History" and decided...hell, I'm home from work and I feel cruddy, so I might as well read this tripe and maybe find something to laugh at.
Amazingly enough, the list begins auspiciously with Iron Butterfly in the Number 50 slot. Now, I like the radio edit of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" a lot, but the album version is just too much--and that says a lot, because I'm a total prog-rock madman who seriously gets a raging woodrow when he hears a 25-minute song with fifteen different time-sig changes, bass/drum/guitar/triangle/didgeridoo/etc. solos, and the like. Next up, in 49: Toad the Wet Sprocket.
Here's where I felt my Eyebrow of Consternation begin to inch up a bit. Toad the Wet Sprocket? Despite the fact that my ex Jennifer really liked them, I still have a great modicum of interest in these guys' music. It's nothing special, but it's good American mope-rock in the vein of The Gin Blossoms. OK, on to the next.
Master P, Goo Goo Dolls, The Spin Doctors, Gipsy Kings (their shitty later stuff, not their awesome first album), Mike and the Mechanics...OK, yeah, I can see that. Those bands all fucking suck. But wait. Manowar? Manowar is stonecold METAL! You cannot deny it. Yes, they're cheesy as hell...but that's what they're all about. They're well aware of that.
And then, what do I see? The Doors? Sure...the Doors are heavily overrated, but just judging them by their influence on so many follow-up bands (like Echo & The Bunnymen, for christ's sake), they have to earn a certain amount of props. By this point in the article, I'd begun to wonder just how much of this was pseudo-ironic, as the hipster/pop-idiot crowd that Blender caters to revels in that kind of clumsy "wit". But this wasn't wit at all. These dummies actually mean what they say, apparently.
But then we've got 98 Degrees (fuck you, LaChey), Paul Oakenfold, Live...and Japan. David Sylvian is one of my idols, so Blender earns their second big ol' Fuck You there. But the worst was to come.
Right after Richard Marx...I find Skinny Puppy.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHAT?!
Witness!
29 SKINNY PUPPY
The audience rarely sang along to “Dogshit”
And so it came to pass in the 1980s that two Canadian Kevins changedtheir names to cEvin and Nivek in order to make themselves more interesting, hired a singer named Dwayne (who would die of a heroin overdose) and spent almost a decade making ear-torturing industrial music. The sound of whiny students on drugs sampling Timothy Leary — as scary as Mannheim Steamroller.
Appalling fact On the Head Trauma tour, cEvin sliced open his stomach with broken glass and performed a vivisection. Relax, everyone — he was only pretending.
Worst CD Too Dark Park (Nettwerk, 1990)
Huh? All right, who's the dumb son-of-a-bitch who actually noted in the above piece that Dwayne was hired as a vocalist? This obviously indicates that the moron didn't even bother to look up anything concerning the band before writing the above paragraph.
Sure. There are plenty of people who don't like Skinny Puppy--and that's their prerogative. And they have every right to, ahem, write anything they want about their dislike of said band--but what truly annoys me about this article in Blender, and about this same kind of tripe found in various other music mags/webzines, is that it's not critical at all. When a critic gives something a bad review, it's because said critic finds something in the music lacking, distasteful, or incomprehensible...but that critic will often at least be able to know something about the music and/or group he's lambasting in order to point out specifically why that music is bad. For instance, I can easily tell you to avoid buying Radio 4's new album, Enemies Like This, because it's total shit. But what does that mean? What gives me cause--and warrant--to say that? Well...I'm an avid post-punk/New Wave junkie who can rattle off the release dates of every single one of Gary Numan's albums and I've listened to so much New Wave music that I can at least be able to tell you particulars of what makes that album so bad. Example: their previous album, Stealing of a Nation was an amazingly fun, if somewhat cliched, New Wave dance album that featured a beautiful, traditional-New-Wave mix of synths and guitars, the bass being especially prominent and funky in straight-up awesome Gang-of-Four fashion. The new album, though, is nothing but stripped-down, synthless, and very, very basic indie rock that sounds like Weezer trying to be The Clash. Radio 4 have lost every bit of individuality they had and now sound just like She Wants Revenge...which will get 'em played in every Hot Topic, sure, but sure doesn't give a New Wave maniac like myself much to be proud of.
If I were to compile a "50 Worst Artists" collection--and believe me, I could--I'd at least give a handful of interesting and well-thought-out reasons for what those artists are on my list. Only in a handful of cases have the Blender staff done this in their list--and only when the reasons for putting an artist on the list are absolutely apparent. For example: Milli Vanilli, whose lipsynching fiasco and subsequent revelation of "vocal fraud" lost them their Grammy. OF COURSE someone like that is going to be on the list, and OF COURSE the reason is going to be listed!
But don't insult my intelligence and the intelligence of people who actually know something about music in all its diverse forms by merely pointing at an artist, giving a few random facts about them (some of which are obviously wrong), and then--in essence--crowing: "HA! HA! We're Blender and because we work for a MAGAZINE that highschool kids read to learn what is cool we have just PWNED J00!"
That's the literary equivalent of me standing on a soapbox in front of a college and laughing at all the kids walking by wearing H.I.M. t-shirts. (Which I wouldn't do, 'cause I like H.I.M. a lot.) It's not constructive criticism, and it's not even properly destructive--it neither points out fixable flaws or digs its bloody fingernails beneath fatal flaws and flays a useless artist in public. It's just wasted breath.
Or wasted words.
At least have some respect for the dullards you're savaging and spend a little time thinking about exactly why they suck so much.
Today I stumbled upon Blender's "50 Worst Artists in Music History" and decided...hell, I'm home from work and I feel cruddy, so I might as well read this tripe and maybe find something to laugh at.
Amazingly enough, the list begins auspiciously with Iron Butterfly in the Number 50 slot. Now, I like the radio edit of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" a lot, but the album version is just too much--and that says a lot, because I'm a total prog-rock madman who seriously gets a raging woodrow when he hears a 25-minute song with fifteen different time-sig changes, bass/drum/guitar/triangle/didgeridoo/etc. solos, and the like. Next up, in 49: Toad the Wet Sprocket.
Here's where I felt my Eyebrow of Consternation begin to inch up a bit. Toad the Wet Sprocket? Despite the fact that my ex Jennifer really liked them, I still have a great modicum of interest in these guys' music. It's nothing special, but it's good American mope-rock in the vein of The Gin Blossoms. OK, on to the next.
Master P, Goo Goo Dolls, The Spin Doctors, Gipsy Kings (their shitty later stuff, not their awesome first album), Mike and the Mechanics...OK, yeah, I can see that. Those bands all fucking suck. But wait. Manowar? Manowar is stonecold METAL! You cannot deny it. Yes, they're cheesy as hell...but that's what they're all about. They're well aware of that.
And then, what do I see? The Doors? Sure...the Doors are heavily overrated, but just judging them by their influence on so many follow-up bands (like Echo & The Bunnymen, for christ's sake), they have to earn a certain amount of props. By this point in the article, I'd begun to wonder just how much of this was pseudo-ironic, as the hipster/pop-idiot crowd that Blender caters to revels in that kind of clumsy "wit". But this wasn't wit at all. These dummies actually mean what they say, apparently.
But then we've got 98 Degrees (fuck you, LaChey), Paul Oakenfold, Live...and Japan. David Sylvian is one of my idols, so Blender earns their second big ol' Fuck You there. But the worst was to come.
Right after Richard Marx...I find Skinny Puppy.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHAT?!
Witness!
29 SKINNY PUPPY
The audience rarely sang along to “Dogshit”
And so it came to pass in the 1980s that two Canadian Kevins changedtheir names to cEvin and Nivek in order to make themselves more interesting, hired a singer named Dwayne (who would die of a heroin overdose) and spent almost a decade making ear-torturing industrial music. The sound of whiny students on drugs sampling Timothy Leary — as scary as Mannheim Steamroller.
Appalling fact On the Head Trauma tour, cEvin sliced open his stomach with broken glass and performed a vivisection. Relax, everyone — he was only pretending.
Worst CD Too Dark Park (Nettwerk, 1990)
Huh? All right, who's the dumb son-of-a-bitch who actually noted in the above piece that Dwayne was hired as a vocalist? This obviously indicates that the moron didn't even bother to look up anything concerning the band before writing the above paragraph.
Sure. There are plenty of people who don't like Skinny Puppy--and that's their prerogative. And they have every right to, ahem, write anything they want about their dislike of said band--but what truly annoys me about this article in Blender, and about this same kind of tripe found in various other music mags/webzines, is that it's not critical at all. When a critic gives something a bad review, it's because said critic finds something in the music lacking, distasteful, or incomprehensible...but that critic will often at least be able to know something about the music and/or group he's lambasting in order to point out specifically why that music is bad. For instance, I can easily tell you to avoid buying Radio 4's new album, Enemies Like This, because it's total shit. But what does that mean? What gives me cause--and warrant--to say that? Well...I'm an avid post-punk/New Wave junkie who can rattle off the release dates of every single one of Gary Numan's albums and I've listened to so much New Wave music that I can at least be able to tell you particulars of what makes that album so bad. Example: their previous album, Stealing of a Nation was an amazingly fun, if somewhat cliched, New Wave dance album that featured a beautiful, traditional-New-Wave mix of synths and guitars, the bass being especially prominent and funky in straight-up awesome Gang-of-Four fashion. The new album, though, is nothing but stripped-down, synthless, and very, very basic indie rock that sounds like Weezer trying to be The Clash. Radio 4 have lost every bit of individuality they had and now sound just like She Wants Revenge...which will get 'em played in every Hot Topic, sure, but sure doesn't give a New Wave maniac like myself much to be proud of.
If I were to compile a "50 Worst Artists" collection--and believe me, I could--I'd at least give a handful of interesting and well-thought-out reasons for what those artists are on my list. Only in a handful of cases have the Blender staff done this in their list--and only when the reasons for putting an artist on the list are absolutely apparent. For example: Milli Vanilli, whose lipsynching fiasco and subsequent revelation of "vocal fraud" lost them their Grammy. OF COURSE someone like that is going to be on the list, and OF COURSE the reason is going to be listed!
But don't insult my intelligence and the intelligence of people who actually know something about music in all its diverse forms by merely pointing at an artist, giving a few random facts about them (some of which are obviously wrong), and then--in essence--crowing: "HA! HA! We're Blender and because we work for a MAGAZINE that highschool kids read to learn what is cool we have just PWNED J00!"
That's the literary equivalent of me standing on a soapbox in front of a college and laughing at all the kids walking by wearing H.I.M. t-shirts. (Which I wouldn't do, 'cause I like H.I.M. a lot.) It's not constructive criticism, and it's not even properly destructive--it neither points out fixable flaws or digs its bloody fingernails beneath fatal flaws and flays a useless artist in public. It's just wasted breath.
Or wasted words.
At least have some respect for the dullards you're savaging and spend a little time thinking about exactly why they suck so much.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 05:00 am (UTC)I also liked Goo Goo Dolls "Iris" a lot.
I also enjoy and own a few LIVE albums. Same goes for Creed.
WTF?! Oingo Boingo does NOT belong on this list. This list is officially fired. Fired I say.
Dust in the Wind is a song I also enjoy. Fuckers.
I hate the people who made that list.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 05:17 am (UTC)Are you being fecetious?
I mean... because... Errr...
I just think "Killing Lonliness" is a bang-up tune's all. I guess I'm kind of a "closet" HIM fan?
Does that make me filthy?
SWH
no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 12:04 pm (UTC)Japan? They included Japan? Arrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhh!!!! So not cool...
I was just listening to "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" yesterday and I was reveling in the fact that it's still better than like 98% of the crap that gets produced nowadays. AND I just bought David Sylvian's new Nine Horses disc on the weekend and it rocks.
Blender soooo don't know what they're talking about. And don't get me started on Skinny Puppy at number 20...
Donkey Dicks and Skinny Puppies....
Date: 2006-07-21 01:20 pm (UTC)I have always been a Skinny Puppy fan and always will now matter how much crap was talked about them back then and today. *Its just the way I roll*….
Bottom line, get a subscription to Maxim. The chicks are hotter and the writers make no fucking sense in their articles anyways… just the way I like it….